


The Dogs of War

by SectoBoss



Series: The New Overwatch [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Fall of Overwatch, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Overwatch still doesn't completely trust Widowmaker, Post-Talon Widowmaker | Amélie Lacroix, Soldier: 76 hunts down Reaper, Symmetra's not happy with Vishkar, and Reaper hunts him down too, but Tracer does
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-23
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-09-01 19:13:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8634646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SectoBoss/pseuds/SectoBoss
Summary: The fledgling Overwatch takes the fight to Talon after Widowmaker’s defection to their side. As she tries to fit in amongst the people she once swore to kill, Soldier 76 hunts down Reaper from the slums of Utopaea to the festivals of Dorado, determined to get answers and revenge for the past. Meanwhile, Reaper has plans of his own, and will stop at nothing to end Soldier 76 and the new Overwatch once and for all. But revelations about what happened that fateful day in Zurich will change everything – and all the while, shadowy figures use the gathering storm to further their own ends.The sequel to London Calling





	1. Prologue: The Last Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go again! Be warned: the update scedule for this is going to be all over the place - I won't be able to bring out the quick updates we saw with London Calling, I'm afraid.  
> Beta-read by [lady_wonder](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_wonder/profile)

The thing that would always stick in Jack Morrison’s memory about that last day was how damned _ordinary_ it had been. You’d think the day that Overwatch finally fell should have been dramatic. Lighting in the sky, omens in the clouds, torrential rain or driving snow. Rumbles of thunder to accompany the roar of the guns, perhaps. 

But that day dawned slightly overcast and a little chilly. The leaves on the trees that lined Zurich’s streets were just beginning to take on the first tinges of orange, and there was the faintest hint of frost in the air – autumn’s outriders, warning of a bitter winter to follow. Perhaps those had been his omens, he would sometimes think, years later, and he’d been too preoccupied to notice them. 

Jack was in the lead vehicle, sat next to the driver, guiding a convoy of three armoured trucks down the Zurich streets with sirens blaring and rush-hour traffic scattering before them. The trucks moved so fast that their anti-gravs couldn’t compensate properly for bumps in the road and his armour clunked and rattled with every pothole. He gripped a handhold in the roof above his head and gritted his teeth to stop himself from biting his tongue. 

The trucks came to an intersection and ploughed straight through. Jack caught a glimpse of startled faces through the windows of oncoming cars. He supposed they must be quite a sight: three Overwatch APCs hurtling through the dawn like the devil himself was chasing them. 

_Or like we’re chasing him_ , Jack thought. 

Watchpoint: Zurich loomed ahead of them, art-deco curves and granite columns. Overwatch’s nerve centre and the pinnacle of everything he and Gabriel had built. Fitting, perhaps, that it was here he’d have to tear half of it down. 

“Slow down,” he said to the driver, a man in armour similar to his own. “Don’t want to cause a pile-up.” 

The soldier glanced at him, said nothing, didn’t slow. Jack didn’t repeat his request. Privately, he was glad. They needed every second. 

One week ago, Jack’s world had been turned upside-down. A massive data leak, worse than any of them had ever planned for: Overwatch’s servers cored open and left for anyone with an internet connection to pick through – which meant just about the entire planet, these days. There had been secrets in there even Jack hadn’t been privy to, things that went deeper than he ever suspected. And from that moment until this one, the word on everyone’s lips had been _Blackwatch_ – Overwatch’s clandestine ops division, headed by ex-Strike-Commander Reyes, once one of the most closely guarded secrets in the world and now out in the light for everyone to see. 

Every Blackwatch op, every assassination and bribe and weapons deal, everything Overwatch didn’t stand for. Everything Jack _thought_ it hadn’t stood for. 

The leak had been traced within moments, of course. According to Athena, it was hardly a professional job. Almost as if the culprit wanted to be found. And considering the trail had led straight back to Gabriel’s desk, Jack could well believe that. 

But the problem was, Gabriel was a hard man to find these days. It went with the territory. For a week the top brass of the UN had bellowed at Jack to find him, to bring him in, to make him face justice. Trying to save face and their own skins, Jack knew, although he kept that thought private. He knew he could very well be in for the chopping block at this rate. They all could. He couldn’t remember a time since the Omnic Crisis when the future had been less certain. Yet, even then, the future had had a modicum of certainty to it. There would be the next mission, and the one after that, and the one after that, until either they won or the omnics did. But this? Jack shuddered and it had nothing to do with the rough ride. Utter uncertainty – he hated it. 

“Athena?” he asked, raising a hand to his earpiece and drowning out the growl of the truck’s engine with the other. 

“Present, strike-commander.”

“Is Gabriel still there?” 

“Commander Reyes remains on-site. He has not moved since you last had me check. Shall I send him a message?” Athena wasn’t supposed to have an emotional range, Jack knew, but he couldn’t help but notice she’d stopped calling him ‘Gabriel’ after the source of the data leak had been revealed. 

Jack considered that for a moment. But what would he say? _Hi Gabe, mind staying where we can see you for five minutes? Been ordered to bring you in. You know how it goes…_ He stifled a strained bark of laughter. 

“Just inform me if he starts to leave.” 

“As you wish, Strike-Commander.” 

Jack sat back in his seat, bracing himself as the truck took a corner way too fast, and the anti-gravs spat and crackled as they tried to level the vehicle. For a hair-raising moment, he thought they’d lose control and smash into the buildings either side of them, but the driver was good and kept them from disaster. 

They hit the off-ramp with a bone-jarring _thud_ and raced on towards the Watchpoint. The electronics in the trucks talked to the security systems and the gates swung open, barriers raising as they approached. A curve of concrete arced towards the imposing bulk of the Watchpoint and the trucks roared along it like bullets from a gun. 

It had been barely half an hour since Gabriel had suddenly reappeared back on Athena’s sensors – and in the middle of their damn headquarters, no less. They’d made good time. 

“Why d’you think he came back?” the man driving the truck asked, half to himself and half to Jack. 

Jack shrugged. “Hell if I know.” 

“Give himself up, maybe?” 

“You didn’t know him very well, did you?” Jack said with a sidelong glance at the man. “Gabe’s not the surrendering type.” 

“Better than the alternative,” the soldier muttered gloomily. “Thirty seconds,” he added. 

Jack hammered on the panel that separated the truck’s cabin from the compartment at the back where six Overwatch soldiers were waiting for their orders. “Thirty seconds!” he yelled, his enhanced voice easily audible over the snarl of the truck’s engine. 

“Copy that,” came the response. 

The APCs rounded the last curve and veered to a halt outside the Watchpoint. Jack looked up at its gleaming façade as he jumped down from the truck’s cabin and slammed the door shut behind him. The other soldiers clambered out after him, two at a time, their polymer armour clattering on the asphalt. Behind him, the other APCs were ejecting their soldiers too. The faint chill in the air made his knee twinge as they set off towards the sweeping glass doors of the Watchpoint, the memory of an old wound from the Crisis that had never quite healed properly. 

“Strike-Commander,” Athena said in his ear as he took the granite steps up to the doors two at a time. 

“Go ahead.” 

“Commander Reyes is on the move.” 

Jack swore. “Heading?” 

“Towards the lobby. Perhaps he is coming to meet you?” 

Something unpleasant crawled up Jack’s spine. Another bad omen, perhaps. 

“Keep tracking him.” 

“Affirmative, Strike-Commander.” There was a pause. “And good luck.” 

Emotionless AIs weren’t supposed to wish people luck. But then they weren’t supposed to seize control of Omniums and declare war on humanity either. _Will we ever learn?_ he wondered. 

His reflection greeted him in the polished glass of the Watchpoint’s doors for a moment, the faded image of a grim-looking man with a rifle, dressed in blue combat armour and with the first few lines of age starting to show around his edges. He pushed it aside and the door swung open at his touch. The soldiers filed in after him, filling the lobby with the pounding of booted feet. 

“Fan out, five-meter spread,” he heard one of them say to the rest. You’d think they were quarantining a God Program, the number of soldiers they’d brought. Jack knew the brass thought he had been overreacting to demand three whole squads. His response had simply been that he knew Gabriel better than they did – and so yes, the extra soldiers really were necessary. 

_Didn’t know him well enough to see this coming, though,_ a part of him scolded. 

The Watchpoint’s lobby was a long sweep of marble that stretched away from Jack in both directions. Glass windows in the walls and roof let in the weak morning sun to cast long shadows over the floor. Along the far wall was the Overwatch memorial – every agent that had fallen in the line of duty, from the earliest days of the Omnic Crisis to the most recent fights against more nebulous threats. 

Without meaning to, Jack’s eyes found the small gap in the long, otherwise unbroken list of names and portraits. Once upon a time the name ‘Lena Oxton’ had been inscribed there, until the closest thing to a miracle he’d ever seen had happened. 

Directly in front of him was a curving set of stairs that led to the upper floors of the Watchpoint. Two sets of statues flanked it, humanoid figures lined up like they were on a parade ground. The old and the new, they were supposed to represent: Overwatch’s original members passing the torch onto its newest recruits. They’d been designed not to closely resemble anyone in particular, Jack knew, but he couldn’t help but see outlines in their silhouettes. One always made him think of Gabriel, another of poor Ana. On the other side, he’d swear he saw Genji Shimada’s faceplate in the angular lines of one of the statues’ heads. And Lena Oxton’s bulky accelerator in the curves of another. 

Would there be an Overwatch left for the new blood to inherit, after what had happened? After what was about to happen? Jack didn’t know. Didn’t want to think about it. 

“I always hated those goddamn statues.” 

The voice rang out from above them. Several stories up, yet loud enough that Jack could hear it all the way down in the lobby. No baseline human could speak that loud – but the Soldier Enhancement Program had designed its subjects to be able to shout over the loudest battlefield, if comms ever went down. 

“Gabriel,” Jack called back. Not a question. Behind him, he heard the soldiers tense. 

“Modern art masterpieces. The old making way for the new. Like we’re fucking obsolete.” 

Footsteps on the stairs. Jack kept his rifle ready. 

“Hey there, Jackie-boy,” Gabriel said as he rounded the curve of the steps and descended towards Jack and the soldiers. He was dressed in Blackwatch colours – black clothes and body armour, his favourite beanie jammed on his head and his favourite shotguns hanging from his belt. 

“You know why I’m here,” Jack said as Gabriel reached the last step and stood before him. 

“Fat cats and armchair generals got another mission for you? What is it this time – shoot up a bunch of protesters? Bomb a village somewhere?” 

“Thought that was more your line of work,” Jack shot back before he could stop himself. 

Gabriel looked offended. “Me? I’m not the one who just shoots who he’s told.” 

“Just who you want.” 

“Ha! Listen to that, boys,” Gabriel scoffed, leaning slightly to address the soldiers assembled behind Jack. “Your Strike-Commander’s got a pair after all.” 

“You know," Jack hissed, "I’m your Strike-Commander too.” 

“Keep telling yourself that, see where it gets you.” Gabriel chuckled. “Right here, it seems,” he added, gesturing to them, the lobby, the soldiers. 

“We’re bringing you in, Gabriel. You can come quietly or not, makes no difference to me.” 

“Pro tip, Jack – try not to quote _RoboCop_ when you’re arresting someone.” 

Jack ground his teeth. Anger tried to get the better of him. It succeeded. 

“ _Shut up_!” he exploded, taking a step forward. Gabriel stood his ground. “You think you can just stand there and crack jokes? After everything you did? I saw the shit you leaked, Gabriel. Murder, extortion, arms deals – and what, you think you’re still the good guy?” 

“Listen to yourself, Jackie-boy. _Good guy_. No one talks like that anymore, you know that, right?”

“Oh, for the love of-” 

“I’m the guy they made do the shit you wouldn’t,” Gabriel snarled. “Captain America here doesn’t want to get his hands dirty doing what has to be done, so they fob it off onto his fucking ethnic sidekick who they can afford to bury if things go sideways.” He laughed, humourlessly, despairing, and later Jack would be convinced that it was at that moment that nothing could be saved – the moment that Gabriel decided: _fuck it all, let’s do this_. 

“What do you think this is?” Gabriel continued, pointing to the soldiers who by now had their weapons trained on him. “You’re not here because of what I did, Jack. You’re here because now everyone knows. The brass has decided it’s time to clean house, and they’ve sent their favourite attack dog to do their work. Maybe you’ll get another promotion after this,” he added with loathing. 

“Even if that was true, you never had to do what you did! They didn’t point a gun at your head!” Jack bellowed. Gabriel scowled. “And even if they did you were always such a stubborn bastard that I don’t think it’d have made a difference. So why the _hell_ should I believe a word that comes out of your damn mouth?” 

“Oh, I don’t give a fuck whether you believe me or not anymore. You’ve been drinking the Kool-Aid so long, you’d believe them if they told you the world was flat. Just know two things, Jack: one, everything I did, I did with authorisation. This goes to the _top_ , Jack, and even then it keeps on fucking going.” 

“I’ll be sure to mention that in my report,” Jack deadpanned, injecting as much sarcasm as he could. “And two, before I slap the cuffs on you?” 

“And two: I didn’t fight for thirty goddamned years just to rot in a prison cell because I’m no more use to some bean counter. I’m not going down without a fight.” 

“You don’t want to do this, Gabriel.” 

“Never wanted to do something more in my life, Jackie-boy.” He tensed, ready to grab his shotguns at a moment’s notice. Jack gripped his rifle. “Time to see if you really did learn everything I taught you.” 

“There’s one of you. There are twenty of us. Don’t be a damn fool.” 

“They’ll write that on your headstone, _cabr_ _ón_.” Gabriel grinned. “Any last words?” 

“You’ve got a damn high opinion of yourself.” 

“Christ, Jack, even your last words are shit.” Gabriel sighed and shook his head like an exasperated teacher confronted with yet another wrong answer. “You know what? For old time’s sake, I’m going to give you one last piece of advice, Jackie-boy.” 

“What?” Jack growled. 

“Get down.” 

It took Jack half a second to process those words and the meaning behind them, another half-second to believe them. Plenty of time for Gabriel’s hand to shoot to his belt, retrieve something that looked horribly like a detonator, jam his thumb down on it… 

The explosion erupted behind Jack, picked him up and sent him flying like an angry child throwing a doll. He felt it in his chest as much as he heard it in his ears, a heavy smack that made his lungs ache. The world span crazily. His vision blurred. Something rushed up to meet him and he crashed into it with a spasm of pain. For a moment his vision darkened around the edges. 

Coughing and gasping, fighting off unconsciousness, Jack picked himself up from the floor with bleeding hands. He looked up. The explosion had knocked him into one of the statues and there was a nasty crack in it where the cheap plaster had come off second-best. He gulped down a mouthful of air and started choking as his lungs filled with smoke. His ears rang with the echo of the explosion and the sound of screams. 

Athena in his ear: “Strike-Commander? Strike-Commander! I’ve lost visual contact with the Watchpoint lobby! Seismic sensors are pulsing! What’s going on?” 

Jack heaved for breath and leant against one of the statues. Thick, black smoke swirled lazily in the air. Faint shapes moved through it, indistinct, fleeting. There came the chatter of automatic fire and the truncated scream of someone being cut down. 

To his left, the air suddenly shimmered, distorted, and there was a man stood there where there hadn’t been one a second ago. He wore black combat armour and a balaclava covered his face. 

_Thermoptic camo_ , his punch-drunk mind told him. _Blackwatch. Ambush. Shit!  
_

Completely on instinct, Jack raised his rifle and raked the man with a burst of machine gun fire. He went down in a spray of red spatters and white chunks, bright blue armour-gel leaking out of his shattered chestplate. 

From somewhere above him, Gabriel’s voice boomed like the voice of God. “Ladies and gentlemen of Blackwatch!” Jack looked around wildly but all he could see was the smoke, the dust, bodies in Overwatch armour sprawled across the floor. 

“We fought in the shadows for years!” Gabriel continued. “We bled so that the rest of Overwatch could keep their squeaky-clean reputation! Our comrades died to put stripes on Morrison’s shoulders! And this is how they repay us?” 

Some smoke ebbed aside, curling slowly through the air of the lobby, and Jack was afforded a clear view upwards. Gabriel was stood at the top of the stairs, leaning over the balcony and bellowing down at the fighting Overwatch and Blackwatch soldiers like a mad priest haranguing his congregation. 

“The moment we’re not useful, we’re to be swept aside!" Gabriel roared. "Is that the fate you want?” 

“ _No_!” Jack heard some of the Blackwatch soldiers cry back. 

“Are we going to go quietly?” 

“ _No_!” 

“Are we going to give them something to goddamn remember us by?” Gabriel was grinning now, a mad and twisted leer, spittle flying from his lips. 

“ _Hell yeah_!” came a voice from the other side of the statue Jack was propped up against. He whirled around. The empty air rippled as a Blackwatch commando de-cloaked and leapt at him, shoving a pistol into his face. Jack caught it and shoved it aside just as she pulled the trigger. The bullet snapped past him and raised a puff of pulverised masonry next to his head. She snarled wordlessly at him and tried to aim again, but he was stronger, had been designed by a lot of government scientists to be stronger. He ripped the gun out of her hand with the crackle of dislocating wrist bones and, in blind survival mode, used it as a club to crush her skull. The Blackwatch soldier went down with a faint gurgle and didn’t move. 

Jack tossed the pistol aside, picked up his rifle, fired at another commando who was pouring suppressing fire towards a group of Overwatch soldiers cowering behind the memorial wall.

“The way I see it, we’re all dead men walking!” Gabriel hollered from above. _Jesus, he’s gone over the edge,_ Jack thought madly to himself as he pressed himself to the floor to avoid return fire. “So if we’re going down, we’re taking them with us!” 

Bullets pinged and whined all around him. Jack sprinted out of cover, trying to draw fire, reasoning it was probably him Blackwatch was after more than the soldiers he’d brought with him. He dived behind the memorial wall just as something high-calibre chewed new holes into the marble, erasing the names of a few more agents. 

“Blackwatch!” Gabriel shouted from above, pumping his fist into the air. 

“ _Blackwatch! Blackwatch!_ ” came the roar of the reply. 

“All units, all units, sound off,” Jack gasped into his own microphone. 

Dead silence in his ear. 

“Alpha squad, report.” Nothing. “Delta squad? Zulu squad?” _Shit, shit, shit._ “Is anyone still alive in here?” 

A few faint crackles, like tattered remnants trying to speak through damaged – or jammed? – comms. Nothing he could count on. The few barks of gunfire still suggested that someone was still alive out there, but where and how many? He had no idea. 

Suddenly his earpiece fizzed and cracked. “Strike-Commander?” 

“Athena?” he gasped. 

“Heavy interference throughout the Watchpoint, Strike-Commander. Communications are down and my subsystems have received substantial damage. Something is going on!” 

“It’s Gabriel. He’s… staging a mutiny,” Jack said, aware of how ridiculous that sounded. “Blackwatch has ambushed us, multiple casualties. Athena, you need to get us some support _now_!” 

A moment’s pause on the other end of the connection. A long time, by the standards of AI. 

“No additional units are available, Strike-Commander.” 

Something not a million miles from panic slithered down Jack’s spine and coiled up in his guts. 

“What?” he demanded. “But there’s a whole reserve battalion at Watchpoint: Geneva…” 

Athena cut him off, with an odd, clipped tone that Jack had never heard her use before. 

“Incoming call, Strike-Commander. From Senator Petras.” 

“ _Now is not the time_!” Jack spat. 

“Connecting,” Athena said simply, as if she hadn’t heard – or didn’t have a choice, Jack realised. 

“Morrison?” came a new voice in his ear. Senator Petras, Overwatch liaison to the UN Security Council. Not a man Morrison got along with and not the man he wanted to be speaking to now. “Athena tells me there’s a situation brewing down there.” 

Jack peered around the corner of the memorial, checking no-one was advancing on his position. He caught one Blackwatch soldier between cover and blew the man’s knee out for his trouble. 

“Reyes is resisting arrest,” he said as he ducked back to avoid the bullets. “Blackwatch is aiding him. All support squads down, I need reinforcements!” He was supposed to tack a ‘sir’ onto the end of that, but he really wasn’t feeling too deferential right now. 

“I see. Can you contain him?” 

“I’ll be lucky if I get out of here alive!” Jack said. “You need to contact Geneva! Get the reserves up here _now_!”

“That’s a ‘no’, then?” 

“What?” Jack asked, shaking his head as if the senator could see him. 

“Very well.” Petras sighed heavily. “In that case, Strike-Commander, your service will be honoured. Petras, out.” 

And with that the line went dead. 

Jack was left crouching behind the battered memorial wall, immobilised by a mixture of shock and horror. “Athena?” he asked desperately. “Athena?” 

_Your service will be honoured._ There was only one thing that could mean.

Booted feet sounded behind him. He turned to see Gabriel striding out of the smoke, shotguns levelled at his head. 

In his ear, Athena suddenly cried: “Strike-Commander! I’m detecting a missile launch!” 

The bottom dropped out of Jack’s stomach. _No…  
_

“Launch detected from Hardpoint: Mont Blanc. Ballistic missile, sub-continental range. Target unconfirmed. On trajectory for Zurich.” Athena’s voice was clipped and cold as she read out his death sentence – and then quavered a little as she added: “I apologise, Strike-Commander. They used my override codes. There was nothing I could do.” 

The world suddenly seemed to go very quiet, despite the gunfire rattling away behind Jack, Gabriel’s footsteps echoing around him, the first creaks and groans of the Watchpoint’s superstructure buckling under the damage Gabriel’s bomb had caused. 

“It’s okay, Athena,” he lied. “It’ll be okay.” 

“…Strike-Commander?” Athena asked. Something in her voice sounded plaintive, afraid. “Blast radius of the missile is approximately half a mile. If you hurry…” 

“Don’t worry, Athena. I’ll make it.” A lie, they both knew it, but a necessary one. 

A pause. “Understood.”

“Take care, Athena.”

He cut the connection before she could say anything else. And that just left him and Gabriel. 

“End of the line, _cabr_ _ón_ ,” Gabriel chuckled as he stepped up to Jack, broken masonry and glass crunching underfoot.

“Gabriel, listen to me,” Jack started. 

“Bit late for that.” 

“ _Listen to me_!” 

“Listen to you, what? Beg?” 

“Gabriel, for God’s sake, they’ve launched a damn missile at us! We have to get out of here!” 

Gabriel just laughed, and then he took a second look at Jack’s face. Whatever had come between them, they’d known each other for the better part of thirty years now – and they knew when the other was lying. 

“You’re serious,” Gabriel said after a moment. 

“We have to get out of here,” Jack said. “This is bigger than your petty revenge play. Call your men off, we need to get out of here _now_.” 

Together, as if on some mutually shared instinct, they looked up through the smoke and the shattered glass of the Watchpoint. The morning sky shone crisp and blue above them, peppered with a few flecks of white cloud. 

And there in the middle of it all, a thin streak of grey, capped by a glimmering speck. Seeming almost to hang in the sky, not moving higher or lower, the odd optical effect of looking directly down the axis of motion.

_Incoming.  
_

“Jesus Christ,” Gabriel muttered under his breath. _  
_

“We still have time…” Jack croaked. 

“We never had time,” Gabriel said. “Those things don’t fly that fast.” 

“What do you mean?” Jack asked, knowing exactly what he meant but refusing to believe it. 

A strong hand suddenly grabbed Jack’s wrist, his feet were kicked out from under him. The world span and he toppled to the floor with a cry. 

“What do you think I fucking mean?” Gabriel demanded, pinning Jack to the floor. “They launched that thing before you even turned up here.” 

“Gabriel, for God’s sake!”

“How does it _feel_ , huh, Jackie-boy? To know you’re just as disposable as I am?” 

Jack writhed, tried to kick Gabriel off, got a knee in his back for the trouble. 

“ _Incoming missile strike! Everybody out, now!_ ” Gabriel roared across to where the Blackwatch commandos were finishing off the last of the Overwatch soldiers. There were a few seconds of confused silence, 

“ _You deaf or something? Everybody out!_ ” 

Jack heard the clatter and scramble of the Blackwatch soldiers clearing out as fast as their legs could carry them. Probably their own AIs were warning them too, and they’d been as reluctant to believe as he had. He struggled against Gabriel’s grip again tried to throw him off, got nowhere. Gabriel always had been the better one at hand-to-hand combat. 

Jack twisted his head, looked up again. That speck hadn’t moved but it had grown bigger. If he strained his ears he thought he could hear the screech of its engine, powering down towards the Watchpoint like some latter-day bird of prey. 

“You ever died for something you believed in?” Gabriel asked, gazing up at the plummeting warhead with a mad grin on his face. “I have. So many times I’ve lost count, Jack. At least this time, I know they won’t be able to use me anymore.” 

And Jack opened his mouth to reply, although what he would say he never could remember. But before he could even draw breath, the world was suddenly drowned out. All he could see was light, bright and furious and burning. His ears were battered by the roar of detonation and the shriek of collapsing metal and splintering glass. Something razor-sharp whirled across his face but he felt nothing at all. Because all he could feel was a horrible, scorching heat – which was suddenly replaced with crushing pressure as, in one last, desperate act, Gabriel flung himself down and shielded Jack’s body with his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that's the prologue - stay tuned for the start of the work proper!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long! Been a bit busy lately...

Six years on from that terrible day, Jack Morrison woke with a start.

He bolted upright in his chair, looking around as he blinked the sleep from his eyes. The familiar contours of his old room at Watchpoint: Gibraltar slowly coalesced around him. Plain walls painted in light pastel colours, an unmade bed, a second chair that was doubling up as a wardrobe, a halogen lamp, and a desk covered with holograms and paperwork that all demanded his undivided attention. For a moment, it was like he’d never left.

A few things had changed, though.

The paint on the walls was flaking, six years of neglect showing in the spidery cracks. The clothes dumped on his chair were no longer the uniform of Strike-Commander Morrison but of a man who went more commonly by Soldier 76. The reports on his desk were a lot sparser than they once had been – used to be they came from all over the world, telling tales of terrorist plots and insurgent actions and toppling governments. Now, he was lucky if someone told him about what was happening outside the Watchpoint. He got most of his bad news from the evening news these days.

And then there was the fact that the room hadn’t quite come into full focus. Jack sighed and patted around on his desk for his visor, not bothering to look over, knowing where he’d left it.

He was lucky, he knew. To survive a direct missile strike with only mild vision impairment – well, perhaps _luck_ didn’t quite cover it. The biochemical improvements he’d gotten in the Soldier Enhancement Program had played their part. As had Angela’s work, after she and the rest of the first responders dug him out of the rubble of Watchpoint: Zurich.

Gabriel covering him to keep him alive might have had something to do with it, too, but he didn’t like to think about that too much. Whether that was because thinking of Gabriel brought back bad memories, or because he didn’t want to believe he might be in debt to the man after everything else he’d done, well…

He didn’t like to think about that too much. And that was that.

His fingers found the cold metal of his visor and he lifted it towards his face. He studied it for a moment, his scarred face reflected in its burnished surface, before putting it on.

“Used to be a time when we didn’t have to hide behind masks,” he murmured quietly to the empty room.

“We, Strike-Commander?” Athena’s voice asked softly from a speaker embedded in the ceiling. Jack looked up with a start.

“Athena,” he said with exasperation. “A little privacy would be appreciated now and then.”

“I apologise, Strike-Commander…”

“It’s just Jack, now.”

“…Strike-Commander Jack.”

Jack grinned in spite of himself.

“I know organics prefer their privacy on occasion,” Athena continued, sounding repentant. “It’s just…” She paused awkwardly.

“Yeah?” he said.

“It has been so long,” Athena blurted, as if she was embarrassed by this and wanted to say it quickly before she decided otherwise, “since it was anyone other than Winston and I at this Watchpoint.”

“So…?”

“I missed you. All of you.”

There was a moment’s silence.

“And besides,” she continued, briskly, “I was built to keep an eye on you. And the rest of Overwatch. It is good to be able to resume my function once more.”

Jack looked up at the speaker in faint wonder. “Careful there, Athena. You almost sounded like a machine for a moment.”

“I do not understand,” Athena said, in a manner that suggested entirely the opposite.

Jack smiled. “Sure you don’t.”

Once upon a time, Jack remembered, back when he had been just a boy, the whole world had been worried about the ramifications of making machines that could think like people. This was before the Crisis, even before the Omnica Corporation had put a servitor in every household. Oh, the arguments they’d had, back and forth between various academics. What would happen to humanity in the age of artificial intelligence?

As far as Jack could remember, not one of them had ever supposed that the machines might be the ones to learn humanity and the people the ones to forget it. Funny how the world works.

“Anyway,” Jack continued, flipping the visor round and pressing it to his face. The world came into focus at last. “There’s a fine line between keeping an eye on us and prying.”

“I know, Strike-Co… Jack.”

“I know you know. I’m just reminding you, is all.”

“Understood.”

“Good.” Jack checked the time in the corner of his visor. Just gone midday. How old had he gotten, that he took naps before it was barely afternoon? “In that case, I think I’m going to get some lunch.”

“Jax has informed me that he is attempting to cook paella for lunch today,” Athena said. “I believe he has high hopes for this one.”

Jack grunted in a manner that suggested he’d reserve judgement until he’d seen it. Jax was an omnic and ex-Overwatch reservist who Tracer had brought back with her from Paris after a last-ditch attempt to keep Widowmaker from Talon’s clutches. In the absence of anyone else who was reliably on-base 24/7, he’d found his way to a position as the new Overwatch’s head – and only – chef. By all accounts, his cooking was perfectly passable, although hampered somewhat by his complete lack of a sense of taste.

“Well, as long as it’s edible,” Jack sighed, privately thankful he’d lived a life on military rations and was therefore able to eat just about anything.

“I’m sure it will be fine,” Athena said soothingly.

Jack stood, stretched and made for the door of his quarters, stepping over where he’d dumped his pulse rifle on the floor. _Sloppy_ , he chided himself. _That belongs in the armoury._ He resolved to put it back there the minute he was done with lunch.

He had just reached the door when a little pop-up message appeared on his visor’s display.

_[You have one (1) new email.]  
_

Jack stared at the message dumbly for a moment.

_What… but… no-one has my…  
_

“Athena?” he asked. “Are you seeing this?”

“I am.”

“No one has my email address. No one should be sending an email to someone who’s supposed to be dead… Athena, where the hell did this come from?”

“Tracing it now, Strike-Commander. And I advise you not to open it before I have.”

“Well, yeah. I’m old, not stupid, Athena.”

“Acknowledged, updating personnel file,” Athena all but muttered.

“Decrease sarcasm protocols by ten per cent,” Jack retorted.

“You know I don’t have…” she began, then stopped. “Trace completed.”

“That was quick. And?”

“It’s not from anywhere, Strike-Commander.”

“It’s Jack. And what do you mean, not from anywhere?”

“I mean, it’s not from anywhere. No metadata showing a point of origin. The servers that sent it to your account don’t know where it’s from." Athena paused. "Jack, with modern security protocols, _that should not be possible_.”

_Brilliant. A phantom email_ , Jack thought.

“So what should we do?” he asked, already knowing what he was going to do.

“I recommend quarantining it until we know what it is and where it came from. There could be anything in there.”

“Alright.” A pause. “I’m going to open it now.”

“ _What_ —?"

It could be valuable information from a new informant. It could be a virus Talon had designed to wipe Overwatch’s servers clean. It could be anything, really. Jack knew he was a fool to open it – come on, this was cyber-security 101, don’t open what you don’t know – but he did it anyway.

_Because it could be from Gabriel_ was a thought he steadfastly refused to let surface into his mind.

He gestured for the visor to open the email. Text spilled across his vision. His eyebrows raised in confusion and no small amount of surprise.

The message read:

> _Ayyy_ _ése  
>  _
> 
> _So, do I call you Soldier 76 or Jack Morrison? 'Cos trust me, that did NOT take long to figure out. Can’t believe no one at a news network’s made the connection yet, considering all those “who is the masked vigilante?” stories they love to run. The state of the modern media, eh?  
>  _
> 
> _Whatever, I’m sending you this as a favour to someone I actually care about, so don’t think we’re friends just because you can’t get good security on your inbox.  
>  _
> 
> _Btw, ‘OldMansWar76’ is not a secure password. Change it. Better yet, get your pet AI to change it for you. She’s better at this than you are, trust me – was nearly a challenge to get into your network undetected. Nearly.  
>  _
> 
> _I’ve had to bounce the bulk of this message from every server from here to Numbani to keep it secure, so it’ll have a crappy download speed. Deal with it.  
>  _
> 
> _Also, if she’s still alive and you lot haven’t just thrown her into the sea, tell Widowmaker she made Gabi very upset. Can she please do it again? He’s even more fun when he’s pissed off.  
>  _
> 
> _Later, cabrón_

And there at the bottom, instead of a name: a stylised ASCII skull.

“What on earth…” Jack began to splutter, but whoever had written the email wasn’t done with him yet. Another message window popped up, this one covering half his vision:

_[File downloading… 0.01%]  
_

_[File downloading… 0.02%]  
_

_[File downloading… 0.03%]  
_

“Wonderful,” Jack hissed, pulling his visor from his face and letting it dangle from his hand. “Athena? What do you make of all this?”

Athena made a noise that could have been a hum of distaste. “I had sincerely hoped I would not have to deal with this individual again,” she huffed.

Jack frowned. “Excuse me?”

“A hacker who is believed to have ties to Talon and who goes by the name of Sombra. Identity unknown. They have been responsible for multiple security breaches and data thefts in Overwatch systems over the last six years.” Athena’s voice was clipped and precise, as if saying the words left a bad taste in her non-existent mouth.

“And now they’re contacting me.”

“So it would seem.”

“Do you think Talon is behind this?”

“Possibly. But Sombra has struck me as a rather…” Athena hunted for the word for a moment, “… _wilful_ individual. It is possible they are making their own play. And they speak of a favour for a friend, which is not language I would associate with a Talon operation.”

“True enough.” Jack turned the situation over in his head. “What do we know about this Sombra?”

“Nothing beyond the name. And the quality of their code, which I must inform you is excellent. Almost as good as my own.” Athena paused, before adding, “Perhaps better. Sometimes.”

Jack checked the inside of his mask. The display told him the file had barely progressed with its download. He wondered what was in it.

“Any idea when this’ll be finished?”

“Several hours, depending upon the connection speed, Strike-Commander. I can allocate additional bandwidth for it, if you deem it urgent.”

“I do. I want to know what a Talon techie wants with the new Overwatch, and I want to know as soon as possible. Keep me informed – let me know when it’s done.”

“Talon techie,” Athena repeated, almost to herself, sounding as amused as her synthesised voice would allow. “I shall, Strike-Commander,” she said, louder.

“Good. And, Athena, _please_. It’s just Jack Morrison now.”

“You have been neither demoted nor retired from active duty, Strike-Commander. Your rank remains, and my protocols demand I adhere to it,” she said simply. Jack suspected there was more than to it that, but didn’t say so.

“Alright, fine,” he muttered. “If you’re so damn insistent.”

“I afraid I am, Strike-Commander,” Athena said. “Perhaps you could view it as a reminder?”

That gave Jack pause. “A reminder?”

“There was a man before Soldier 76.”

Jack shot a look at the speaker in the ceiling. He put the visor, still clogged with download messages, down on his desk and folded his arms.

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded.

“Nothing beyond the obvious, Strike-Commander,” Athena said with an innocence that didn’t fool him for a second. “But it is worth keeping in mind.”

Jack bit back a reply.

“Jax is cooking… what was it, paella?” he asked instead.

“Yes. Serving in fifteen minutes, as it happens.”

“Then I’m going for lunch. Inform me when the download’s done.”

“Yes, Strike-Commander.”

_Sure, there was a man before Soldier 76,_ Jack thought as he left his room and stalked off towards the mess hall, squinting slightly. He fished in his pocket for a pair of glasses he kept with him for when he couldn’t wear his visor, jamming them onto his face. He briefly missed the metal and the reassuring weight of his faceplate.

_There was a man before Soldier 76 and look what happened to him._

 

* * *

 

The mess hall at Watchpoint: Gibraltar was little more than a room with a few tables and chairs in it, with a hatch taking up one wall which led through to the kitchens. Like everything else on the base, it was utilitarian – bordering on the spartan – and in dire need of a fresh coat of paint.

Widowmaker sat in a chair in the corner while Tracer went to get their food.

You could learn a lot about people by just watching them. She knew that from experience. And besides, she had never been the best at small talk and social interactions – Talon had designed a sniper, not an assassin. Most people didn’t know the difference, or didn’t care, seemed to think that because she’d been built to kill she’d be as good with a dagger and a poisoned drink as she was with a rifle. The truth couldn’t be more different and, privately, Widowmaker looked down on those who had to resort to such crude methods of murder. What she was capable of was nothing short of art, even if she’d used it in ways she was beginning to realise were horrendous. Those other agents Talon had employed, though, who got in close with sweet talk and whispers, who killed with a blade or a toxin they didn’t even know the name of? Amateurs, the lot of them.

Needless to say, she kept such thoughts to herself. She had strong suspicions that she was not exactly welcome here at Watchpoint: Gibraltar, even if no one had come out and said so. She didn’t need to make things worse by admitting that, even now, there was still a part of her that missed Talon, missed her old work, and would love nothing more to ditch them all, even Lena – or better yet, bring Lena along for the ride – and go back.

Over at the serving hatch, Tracer was chatting to Jax as he loaded up two plates with food. He was in the body of a training droid after the events of Paris, with a stubby gun for a left arm and an almost disturbingly human one for his right. One of Genji’s spares, which he’d kindly donated. Widowmaker watched as he heaped a bit more food onto Tracer’s plate with a gesture that was the omnic equivalent of a conspiratorial wink. In return, Tracer grinned, said something Widowmaker didn’t catch, and they both laughed at some shared joke.

She felt a tiny stab of jealously at the way Tracer seemed able to form an instant bond with anyone and looked away, casting her gaze over the rest of the mess hall, taking in some of those who had answered the rejuvenated Overwatch’s call.

Jesse McCree and Hanzo Shimada over there at one table, Jesse bragging about his perfect score in the target range and Hanzo promising to beat it. Jesse was trying very hard to come off as cool and casual, Widowmaker noted, and not quite managing it. She suddenly understood what Tracer had meant when she’d described McCree as ‘hopeless’.

“Hardly seems fair, me with my six-shooter and you with just a bow and arrow,” Jesse was saying. “I can squeeze off four shots before you’ve had a chance to take one.”

“But one is all _I_ ever need, American,” Hanzo emphasized.

If not for the boundless reserves of patience Talon had given her – a valuable resource for a sniper – Widowmaker would have marched up to them and demanded they just go out on a date and get it over with. But she didn’t, not least because she was well aware that neither of the two completely trusted her. Again, it was not a sentiment either had actually articulated, but the way they often kept her in the corner of their eyes and stiffened ever so subtly whenever she walked into a room spoke for itself.

Instead, she looked elsewhere, tuning out McCree’s response. Over at a far table, Ziegler and Amari. Two people who had clearly given that date a go and never looked back. Angela was making a point of some kind, waving her fork around in the air. Fareeha was listening with an expression that said she’d heard this a thousand times before. Next to them, Reinhardt and Amari Senior, the sight of whom still made all sorts of memories churn in Widowmaker’s head.

She was in a strange situation with the Amaris – Ana had openly forgiven her for her actions, while Fareeha clearly still had some reservations about sharing a base with her mother’s almost-murderer. As a result, Widowmaker had resolved to stay out of Fareeha’s way and, so far, it seemed to be working. The few times they’d passed each other in the Watchpoint’s corridors, Fareeha had responded with a curt nod and hadn’t once tried to choke the life from her – which was a big step up from the first time they’d met.

Winston, the gorilla from the moon – Widowmaker still couldn’t quite believe how ridiculous that sounded and yet there he was, as large as life, perhaps a little larger – and that ill-tempered dwarf whose name she could never remember were sat to one side, poring over blueprints on a tablet as they ate and discussing something that seemed to be equal parts technical and boring. Widowmaker’s gaze swept on, then came to rest on something that was neither of the above.

Huddled in the far corner of the mess hall was a Bastion unit.

There was a story behind how it had come to be at this Watchpoint, when it was supposed to have been scrapped like the rest of its kind. Widowmaker hadn’t been told it. What she did know was that its combat programming still hadn’t been fully suppressed, despite the best efforts of the one sat next to it – Tekhartha Zenyatta, brother of a machine she’d once gunned down.

It had been Zenyatta’s idea, she knew, to have the Bastion sit in the corner at mealtimes and, with a bit of luck, slowly get used to being around humans. Widowmaker strained her ears to hear them over the quiet hubbub of the mess hall.

“Focus on me,” Zenyatta was saying in a voice that was soft but firm. “On my voice. Auditory input, override, partition and contain. Focus. You are here. You are nowhere else. The ones you see around you are not the ones from long ago. You are amongst friends here. Friends. Do you know that word?”

The Bastion chirruped.

“I suppose the God Programs had no need of it. No matter. It means others who will not hurt you. More, it means ones who will protect you from hurt. Visual input, override, pattern recognition. Do you see?”

The Bastion looked around in a manner that looked almost fearful to Widowmaker’s eyes.

“No. Those are not there. There are no soldiers, no Titans. Visual input, de-service. The war is over.” Zenyatta’s voice lowered, as if briefly talking to himself rather than the Bastion. “All we have to do now is stop fighting it.”

Bastion shivered. There was a heavy metal locker next to it on the floor and, as Widowmaker watched, it picked it up and cradled it to its chest. She tensed involuntarily. She knew what was in that locker, everyone at the Watchpoint did: two hundred rounds of armour-piercing, high-calibre ammunition. The Bastion’s bullets. There had been universal agreement that keeping the thing armed was stupid to the point of suicidal while it was still struggling to adapt to human presence, but as Zenyatta had explained to them all, a Bastion without its armaments felt like a human without their hands. So it had been allowed to keep them, in a locked box to prevent it from arming itself. The equivalent of a security blanket, Widowmaker supposed.

She wondered idly if that was the same reason she was permitted to keep her Widow’s Kiss rifle with her in her quarters, when everyone else kept their weapons in the Watchpoint’s armoury.

The Bastion quailed and chirruped again. “No,” Zenyatted said, soothingly. “You do not. You are required to perform no function. Not even the one you were built to perform. You do not have to kill ever again." He paused. "You are free.”

Bastion slumped and shook its head like it didn’t believe the monk’s words.

Widowmaker thought she recognised a kindred spirit, just for a moment. That itch at the back of her head, that longing for Talon’s certainty and rules, for the work she was allowed to do for them, grew infinitesimally louder.

“Grub’s up!”

And here came the reason she’d never listen to that itch. Tracer sauntered back from the serving hatch with two steaming plates in her hands. She sat down opposite Widowmaker and pushed one of the plates across to her.

Widowmaker looked down at something a little bit charred around the edges but otherwise a great deal better-looking than some of the other foodstuffs Tracer had presented her with over the time they’d known each other.

“And what is this?” she asked, prodding it with her fork as Tracer started shovelling hers down.

“Paella,” Tracer said, her mouth full. “Am I pronouncing that right?” she wondered.

“I think so.” Widowmaker took an experimental bite. Provided she ignored the burned bits – the consequences of an omnic chef, she presumed – it was actually quite good.

“I mean, it’s no fish and chips,” Tracer said wistfully, “but it fills the gap.”

Widowmaker shuddered. She’d had fish and chips precisely once and was in no hurry to repeat the experience.

They ate in a comfortable silence for a few minutes, Widowmaker lost in her own thoughts. Then, the door to the mess hall hissed open. Widowmaker looked up to see Jack Morrison walk in and make a beeline for the serving hatch, pausing briefly to wave hello to Ana and Reinhardt as he hurried past. To her surprise, she noticed he wasn’t wearing that faceplate of his but a rather owlish pair of spectacles.

Her surprise mounted when, once he’d gotten his food, he made straight for their table and sat down in between them.

Tracer looked a bit confused too. “Ah, hello, cap,” she said, with a little frown.

“First of all, it’s Strike-Commander, not captain,” Morrison corrected her. “Second of all, it’s not Strike-Commander anymore. Just Jack.”

Tracer grinned awkwardly and shook her head. “I dunno, cap. _Jack_ just sounds weird.”

Morrison grimaced, sighed, and took a bite of his food. Widowmaker got the feeling that this was a conversation those two had had before.

“Don’t mean to be rude or anything, but… why’re you sat with us?” Tracer continued. “I mean, hey, don’t get me wrong, it’s great to see you and all, but, I dunno… Figured you’d want to catch up with Ana and Rein and them lot before her and me,” she said, pointing to Widowmaker and herself in that order.

“Just want to have a word with…” Morrison paused. “Amélie?”

Widowmaker shook her head.

“Widowmaker, then?”

Well, that was the big question, wasn’t it? Was she still Widowmaker, the murderer? Or someone else now?

Widowmaker just shrugged. “Widowmaker will do for now,” she murmured. Tracer leaned over and gave her shoulder a quick squeeze and Widowmaker smiled gratefully.

Morrison nodded.

“Well,” he said, “I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions.”

Tracer raised an eyebrow.

“Not an interrogation,” Morrison clarified. “Just… something’s come up and I’m hoping you might be able to advise us.”

Widowmaker frowned. “Shall I guess? This concerns Talon?”

Morrison nodded. “Got it in one.”

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, love,” Tracer said under her breath.

Widowmaker shot her an annoyed look. “I am not some fragile thing, _ch_ _érie_. I won’t break down in tears at the sound of the name.”

Tracer shrugged. “Just putting it out there.”

Morrison cleared his throat like a teacher trying to get the class back on track. “Specifically, I want to ask you about a Talon agent. Does the name Sombra mean anything to you?”

Widowmaker visibly deflated. “Oh, _non_. What has she done _now_?” she groaned.

“That’s a yes, then?”

“ _Oui_ , that’s a yes. I have had the singular _pleasure_ of working with her on a number of deployments.”

“And what can you tell me about her?”

Widowmaker thought for a moment. “Has Lena here ever driven you to distraction?”

Tracer gave an indignant little snort. Morrison’s brows rose. “Once or twice,” he admitted, earning him a glare.

“Sombra is worse.”

“Right,” Morrison said. “Anything useful to add to that?”

Widowmaker shrugged. “She is the most talented hacker I have ever met and the only one I have not been ordered to kill. She thinks her talents give her the right to stick her nose into other people’s business. Again, she is sometimes like Lena in her ability to get under your skin. Unlike Lena, she is also petty, cruel, and happy to kill anyone who gets in her way.”

_And a worse kisser, as it turns out_ , some impish part of her wanted to say, just for the reaction it would invoke on Morrison’s face. But she kept that titbit of information to herself, and wondered if some part of Tracer’s personality might be rubbing off on her.

Morrison nodded. “Right. Any clues as to why she might be trying to get in touch with Overwatch?”

Widowmaker did a double-take. “ _Quoi_?”

“I received an email from her this morning. She seems to be trying to send me something, some file that’s too big to attach. Any ideas what it might be? This isn’t some standard Talon cyber-warfare tactic we should be worried about, is it?”

“That was hardly my area of expertise.”

“Yes, but you’re all we’ve got to go on.”

Widowmaker shrugged once more. “I cannot say. I never heard of such a thing. Sombra was always very insistent that she not be disturbed when she worked. Perhaps this thing is a virus, although I can’t imagine her being so brazen about it. Perhaps it is just intended to clog our network while she does something else.”

Morrison scowled. He clearly hadn’t thought of that.

“Perhaps it is just hundreds of terabytes of cat videos,” Widowmaker continued. “She did that once. Crashed three server hubs the Chinese government use.” Her lips curled in distaste. “I had to endure a week of _cat-astrophe_ puns after that.”

Tracer giggled. “You should introduce us. I’m sure we’d get on.”

“I am sure you would, right up until the second she doesn’t need you anymore. That woman is good at pretending. I have never entirely trusted her.”

Morrison cleared his throat again. “She also mentioned _Gabi_. I assume that’s Gabriel Reyes? Reaper?”

Widowmaker nodded. “She has a pet name for everyone.”

“What was yours?” Tracer asked.

“It depended whether or not I was pointing a gun at her for rooting through my private files again.”

Tracer held up her hands in an _I won’t ask_ gesture.

“And you’ve received no communication from her? No secret messages I should be aware of?”

Widowmaker looked at him with a faint air of contempt. “If they were secret, I wouldn’t tell you about them, would I? But _non_ , I have heard nothing from her since first being…” She didn’t want to say captured. “ _Recruited_ into Overwatch. Before London, and all that followed.”

“Very well.” Morrison sighed. “Seems all we have these days is questions. What I wouldn’t give for some answers.”

“Sorry I couldn’t be more help,” Widowmaker said. She’d meant it to sound snide but, to her faint surprise, it came out genuine.

Morrison just huffed and made to stand up, already looking like his mind was on other things.

He tilted his empty plate as he picked it up. The cutlery on it slid around the edge and, as Widowmaker watched, his knife slipped off the plate and fell towards the floor.

Thinking nothing of it, Widowmaker reached forwards and caught it. She moved with the enhanced reflexes and speed those Talon surgeons had been so proud of giving her. Her fingers closed around the handle and she stood up with similar speed to drop it back on Morrison’s plate before he stepped away.

It wasn’t until she looked up, knife in hand, and saw his expression that she realised how this must look – snatching a knife out of the air and leaping towards him, brandishing it, just after discussing some sensitive Talon secrets. Her eyes widened and she opened her mouth to explain.

Morrison was faster. Something smashed into the side of her head. His fist, she realised. Widowmaker reeled and saw stars. Before she could recover, a hand gripped her wrist and twisted it hard. She yelped and dropped the knife as she was slammed down onto the tabletop, rattling the plates on it and knocking the wind out of her.

“Whoa, whoa, what the hell?” she heard Tracer yell.

The way she’d been forced down had twisted her head to one side. Widowmaker looked at the rest of the mess hall as everyone sprang to their feet. She saw McCree’s hand instinctively going to a holster he wasn’t wearing. Hanzo took a step towards her, looking ready to kill. Ana looked round in shock and Fareeha sprang up, her eyes darting back and forth in a way Widowmaker recognised – that of a soldier assessing threats.

There was a deathly silence for a moment.

“What the heck happened?” McCree asked.

“Came at me with a knife,” Morrison said, but he sounded uncertain, flustered, like he was only just piecing together what she’d probably been doing. “I thought…”

_I thought the old Widowmaker had come back._ He didn’t have to say it. Everyone in that room heard it as clear as day. Anger and shame burned through Widowmaker’s chest and her cheeks flushed lilac.

“I don’t care what you thought, cap,” Tracer said coldly. “You could at least let her go now, yeah?”

“Yeah. Sorry.” Morrison released her and Widowmaker stood up straight, glared into his eyes and got a defiant glare back for her trouble.

She turned to the rest of them. “I’m not… I didn’t…” she protested. _I’m not dangerous. Please, believe me. I’m not.  
_

Ana stepped up from behind Hanzo. “I think perhaps we’re all a little on edge right now,” she said. “I’m sure it was just an honest mistake.” She turned to Morrison. “ _Yes_?” she added, with a look that promised bad things if the answer was no.

Morrison nodded.

“And you, my dear,” she said, rounding on Widowmaker, “perhaps don’t go waving knives at people in future, yes?”

Widowmaker nodded.

“Alright then.” She turned to the rest of them. “Show’s over, people. And I’m having seconds of that paella, if there’s any left.”

“Coming right up!” came the call from the kitchen, Jax’s French-accented omnic voice sounding a little relived to have something to do.

Some semblance of normality reasserted itself in the mess hall.

Morrison dropped his dirty plate off at the serving hatch and stalked off, the door swishing aside to let him leave. Widowmaker waited a few moments so she wouldn’t run into him in the corridor and then left too, ignoring Tracer’s plaintive protests and hurrying out of the door without a backwards glance.

She could weather the suspicious looks most of them had given her. She had not expected a hero’s welcome, after all. But she got the feeling that it would be a while before she forgot Bastion’s reaction – a whirr of panic, shuddering servos as everyone else leaped to their feet, a _click-click-click_ that she desperately wanted to believe was anything other than it trying to fire its empty guns in blind terror, Zenyatta leaning in to soothe it – no, it would be a long while before the guilt for that left her, she knew.

 

* * *

 

Jack pushed open the door to his quarters and hurried in, letting it swing shut behind him.

“What happened in the mess hall, Strike-Commander?” Athena asked.

“Didn’t you see?” he asked sullenly.

“I was trying not to pry.”

For a moment, Jack wasn’t sure if she was being serious or not. He decided she was.

“Nothing,” he said.

“Very well.” A moment’s pause told him how much she believed that. “Commander, the file from earlier has finished its download.”

“That was quick. What happened to several hours?”

“I allocated increased resources.”

“I see. Well?”

“The format is that of a VR holo-vid. I believe it was intended to be viewed by you through your visor. That said, I cannot be certain, as I have yet to finish scanning the file for infectious code.”

“I don’t think there’ll be any,” Jack said.

“You’re certain of that?” Athena asked.

“I spoke with Widowmaker. I don’t think this is malicious, Athena. This smacks more of this Sombra woman making her own play.”

“Sombra is a woman?” Athena asked quietly.

“Accoridng to Widowmaker, yes.” Jack frowned. “Why?”

“I don’t know… I had always assumed them to be an omnic.” She sounded oddly disappointed.

Jack decided he didn’t want to know. “ _Anyway_. I think it’s safe to assume this file won’t corrupt all of our servers the moment we open it.”

“You’re going to ask me to open it now, aren’t you?”

Jack picked his visor up from the desk and grinned. “Yep. Always wanted to say this: Athena, play the tape.”

 

* * *

 

_From: Zenyatta, T._

_To: Guest Account  
_

_Dear Widowmaker  
_

_I understand you may not wish to talk to anyone after events this lunchtime, so I am sending you this email instead. You can read it at your leisure – or delete it immediately. I make no judgement.  
_

_All I wanted to say is this: I sense in you a certain measure of distrust and self-doubt. I have found that meditation on such matters is often a good first step to confronting and overcoming them. I plan to meditate this evening, on the 3 rd floor access balcony (it offers a wonderful view of the sunset), and would be delighted if you would join me.  
_

_Genji will not be joining us, as he has decided to make use of the training facilities tonight. So if you do wish to discuss anything, I can promise it will reach no one else. And if you wish to say not one word to me, I shall respect that decision also.  
_

_Zenyatta_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tune in next time for Sombra's secret message and Widowmaker attempting to meditate - and some Zenyatta backstory too, hopefully! Hope you liked it!


	3. Chapter 3

“File unpack complete, accessing now…” Athena said, and added at a reduced volume: “I still think this might be a bad idea.”

All of a sudden a woman appeared in Jack’s vision. She wore a slightly stylised-looking lab coat and her hair swept down over one brow. The holo-vid wasn’t the best quality and she crackled and pixelated around the edges.

“How long do I have?” she asked someone who would have been stood slightly to the right of where Jack was sitting. The person operating the camera, he guessed. From her accent, Jack guessed she was Indian, although he couldn’t be completely certain.

“The system won’t notice you until the servers next refresh. You’ve got… three and a half minutes, _querida_ , use them wisely.” Another voice, also female – Spanish or Mexican, maybe? – and Jack raised his eyebrow infinitesimally at the use of the Spanish for ‘dear’.

“Very well, then.”

The woman in the lab coat gestured with her hands and a blue hard-light chair materialised beneath her. Jack squinted, looking in vain for the emitter, until he noticed the ceramic sheen to the woman’s left arm and the soft glow emanating from her palm.

“Soldier 76,” she said. “I will be brief. There is something I must discuss with you.”

Jack reflected idly that his life would be so, so much simpler if his informants came to him all the time.

“My name is…” the woman began, and then glanced subtly off to her left again, in the direction she’d addressed her earlier question. She was probably getting a lot of frantic gestures not to share that information. “My name is Symmetra,” she hurriedly corrected herself with an awkward cough. “And I am highly-placed within the Vishkar Corporation of India. You’d probably heard of us.”

Oh, he’d heard of them alright. Jack had spent a long time trying to lift up that particular rotting log and see what was crawling underneath. Nothing nice, if even the mildest of the rumours were to be believed.

“I have recently come into possession of some highly classified information,” Symmetra continued, “information which I believe will be of great use to a man with… _interests_ such as yours.”

She leaned forward slightly, towards the camera.

“In particular, it concerns the organisation which calls itself Talon.”

Jack’s eyes widened a little.

“It is unsafe for me to share this information with you over an electronic method of communication. The Vishkar Corporation’s reach is long, especially in this country, and I fear that not even my associate will be able to conceal my activities from my superiors forever.” Symmetra glanced around her a little, betraying her nervousness. “But I can tell you that Vishkar and Talon are in the process of finalising an arrangement that both parties will find mutually beneficial – and which will bode ill for anyone who stands in their way.”

She stared into the camera as if looking him direct in the eye.

“This is not the Vishkar I knew, Soldier 76,” she suddenly blurted out. “I joined an organisation that promised to build a better world for people like… people like me. I was told what we did was for the greater good, and I still believe that Vishkar has the capacity to be a beneficial force in this world.”

_I didn’t know, I was just following orders, this isn’t what I signed up for…_ Jack had heard it all before, coming from omnic terrorists to religious fanatics to so-called freedom fighters. Here was one more person, he thought, who had hoisted the flag and marched in line and who had suddenly had the scales fall from their eyes to see just how far they’d fallen.

He almost felt sorry for the woman. He knew what it felt like to believe in something, only to have it ripped from under you. She was learning that her colossus had feet of clay, and from her expression she was not enjoying it one bit.

“But what has been done… it has to be stopped,” she said with grim finality.

“One minute,” the person off-camera interjected.

“Yes. Of course.” Symmetra straightened her posture and smoothed her lab coat down, recovering from her outburst. Jack got the feeling she wasn’t one prone to extremes of emotion.

“One day from when you receive this video, Soldier 76, there will be a…” She paused as if wondering how to phrase her next words, “… a sporting event in Utopaea.” Jack frowned. Symmetra sounded as if she was trying to be diplomatic, like she had a rather low opinion of such things. “I shall have the address attached to this file. Meet me there, and we will discuss the matter further. And do not worry about finding me in the crowd – I promise you, I shall be impossible to miss.”

She stopped, looked to her left again.

“Alright. That’s it. I’m done.”

There were a few frames where another person briefly swept into the shot – the mysterious camerawoman, going to turn the device off? – and then the holo-vid ended with a few moments of a blank screen displaying a time, date and an address in Utopaea.

Jack pulled the visor from his face and set it down on his bed. “Well, I think we know less now than when we started,” he muttered.

“Far from it, Strike-Commander,” Athena said from the speaker in his ceiling. “We have a contact in Vishkar, and a time and a place to meet them.”

“Assuming it isn’t a trap.”

“It’s also possible that we have our first visual confirmation of the Talon operative Sombra, assuming – oh. _Oh_.” Athena trailed off, sounding indignant.

“What? What is it?” Jack asked.

“See for yourself,” Athena huffed. Jack picked up his visor and looked back through it.

Athena had rewound and paused the video on one of the frames when the second person was briefly in shot. Jack saw a woman in a rather garish purple coat, with a hairstyle that put him in mind of what people from his youth had thought the fashions of the 2070s would look like.

Covering her face was the same ASCII skull from the email, with a line of text wrapped around the edge of it: _You didn’t really think it would be that easy, did you?  
_

“Cheeky little-” Athena began, and then censored herself in a burst of static.

Jack buried his head in his hands. _Hackers_ , he thought. _Never half as funny as they think they are._

“Athena, get ahold of Lena,” he said, standing up and latching his mask securely to his face. “Let her know we’ll be heading out to India as soon as she can fuel the Orca and get it flight-ready.”

“Very well, Strike-Commander. And in the meantime?”

Jack checked a readout on his desk. Topside temperature readings indicated a pleasantly warm Mediterranean evening. “I’m going to see if I can’t catch up with some old friends.”

 

* * *

 

He found them a short way outside the Watchpoint, sat on a small balcony built into the side of the Rock of Gibraltar. A little steel tongue that poked out from a sheer limestone face, towering rock above and the outdoor launch facilities so far below they look like a child’s toy set.

Jack paused for a moment to watch them, not willing to interrupt just yet, feeling almost as if he didn’t have the right.

Ana and Reinhardt, sat with their legs dangling over the edge, a cooler in between them hovering on an anti-grav. Watching the sunset stain the sea a rich orange, watching the lights of Morocco twinkle on the southern horizon, watching the trains shoot across the mighty new bridge that connected Europe and Africa across the Gibraltar straits.

For a moment, stood behind them as the sun warmed the metal of his visor, he could almost pretend nothing had happened.

These two, sat outside and enjoying the view, having a drink after a successful mission. Nothing alcoholic for Ana, her religion was strict on that, maybe an imported beer for Reinhardt. Inside the base Torbjörn and Winston would be hammering together some piece of tech that would save the day. Angela in the med-bay, tutting over her patients. Fareeha and Jesse in the gym or at the shooting range. Lena and Genji in the sparring room, play-fighting at the speed of light.

And Gabriel? Maybe he’d just stepped out for a smoke. He’d be back soon. Right?

Dear God, it was like someone had opened a window into the past right in front of his eyes. And he’d give every last scrap of everything he owned to be allowed to step through.

But the past was Jack Morrison’s country, and the man who was Soldier 76 now wasn’t welcome there. So he cleared his throat, two old and battle-scarred faces turned to look at him, and the past was just a memory.

“Jack!” Reinhardt beamed. “Come and join us!”

“Jack? Who’s that? No, I’m Soldier 76 now,” he said a little melodramatically as he walked over and sat down next to him. Ana giggled quietly.

Reinhardt grinned and made a dismissive gesture. “Bah! When I was twelve my older sister started dying her hair black and insisting we all call her ‘Raven’. I didn’t take her seriously then and I do not intend to take you seriously now.” He beamed and handed Jack a beer from the cooler. “You’re Jack Morrison, the man who led us to victory once – and you will again, I’m sure of it.”

He clapped Jack on the back so hard he was nearly hurled off the balcony and onto the launch pad far below.

“You see what I’ve had to put up with all afternoon?” Ana chuckled softly from the other side of Reinhardt’s bulk. “I swear, Rein, you could talk a smile onto a statue.”

“I’ll settle for a smile on that damn mask,” Reinhardt retorted, jabbing a finger at Jack’s faceplate. “Come on, Jack. You know you’ll have to take it off sooner or later. If only to drink your beer!”

Ana looked across at Jack, creased her brow in thought for a moment, then started rooting around in her pockets.

Jack reached up, clicked off the latch mechanism that locked the visor to his face, and pulled it away. He felt an evening breeze waft gently past them. The skin of his face had grown sensitive after so long locked away under the metal. He always felt oddly vulnerable without it.

Reinhardt’s hands flew to his cheeks in a mockery of old-fashioned shock. “ _Mein Gott!_ The masked vigilante was Jack Morrison all along!” he gasped, eyes comically wide.

“Don’t bank on that acting career suddenly taking off,” Jack said with a good-natured roll of his eyes, setting the visor down on the balcony next to him, between him and Reinhardt. He looked down at the beer in his hand and almost did a double-take.

The label showed a grinning Reinhardt clad in full Bundeswehr-class Crusader armour, with a frothing beer stein in one hand and his other arm balancing a wooden keg on his shoulder. Jack didn’t think he’d ever seen a more stereotypically German image, and by the look of Reinhardt’s expression on the label that was precisely the intention. Underneath, in a font so gothic he could barely read it, was the name _Reinhardtsgebot_.

“You brew your own beer,” Jack said evenly. Confronted with that label, it wasn’t really a question.

“Of course I do! I needed a hobby to fill in the time during my ‘retirement’.”

“Retirement. Sure.” Jack vaguely remembered reading news articles about a man in Crusader armour roaming the shattered heartlands of Germany and defending villages from bandit gangs. Reinhardt retired in the same way mountains did – got rougher round the edges, maybe, and a few cracks appeared here and there, but at the end of the day they never really went away.

“You’re in luck,” Reinhardt added. “I only finished this batch a day or two ago, so there’s plenty more if you want another.”

Jack popped open the bottle with his thumb – a trick he’d perfected long before the Soldier Enhancement Program – and took a swig. Hints of barley and hops washed across his tongue.

“Not bad,” he said, and took another.

“Not bad, he says!” Reinhardt cried, turning to Ana as if to say _can you believe this?_ “My friend, what you are drinking is pure German _craftsmanship_! I challenge you to find an American beer that compares!”

He laughed, finished his own beer, and carefully put the empty bottle down behind him. Saving it to use for the next batch, Jack guessed. He made a mental note not to throw his empties off the balcony like he had a mind to.

Unnoticed by either of them, Ana peered around Reinhardt’s broad back to where Jack’s visor lay on the balcony next to him.

“I propose a toast!” Reinhardt said, as she snuck out a hand and pulled it towards her.

“What on earth to?” Jack asked.

“To us, of course! To Overwatch, long may it last! And to Commander Jack Morrison, who led us to glory once and shall again!”

Ana smiled faintly, unable to quite share in Reinhardt’s enthusiasm.

Jack shook his head dismally. “You’re remembering your history wrong, Reinhardt,” he murmured. “It was Gabriel who led us to victory. The moment they handed it over to me was when it started going downhill.”

The mention of Gabriel Reyes seemed to bring a chill to the air, like a cloud had passed in front of the setting sun. Reinhardt harrumphed and looked away, across the ocean towards the bridge where another mag-lev was hurtling south.

“I don’t consider Reyes a member of Overwatch,” he said. “I won’t lay wreaths at the graves of traitors.”

_Very poetic_ , Jack thought. “Gabriel wasn’t a traitor,” he said sadly.

Reinhardt looked at him incredulously, even Ana raised a disbelieving eyebrow.

“He was just…” Jack started, then realised he didn’t really know how to end that sentence. Gabriel was what? He wanted to say impatient, hot-headed, eager to change the world and straining with all his might against the chains that had held him back. But that didn’t feel right. And didn’t excuse what he’d done.

Gabriel was hot-headed, sure, but he was more than that. He had been an idealist too, in his own twisted ways. He and his friends had fought and bled to save the world from the omnics, and in his mind soldiers got a reward for their service. And the old Jack Morrison would have agreed with him. Jack knew better now, and so too did ‘Reaper’, he was willing to bet. But Gabriel Reyes believed he was owed a place in the world they’d helped build. A place, and a voice. He’d saved the world, so he got to say what everyone else did with it. Whereas Jack Morrison had been content to carry on taking the UN’s orders, going after whoever he was pointed at next.

Just before the end, in those last months before Zurich, as Overwatch crumbled past the point where anyone could put it back together, Jack had compared Gabriel to a mad dog.

“So what does that make you, huh?” Gabriel had asked in response. “The dog’s master? Ha! Keep kidding yourself. No, you’re a dog like me, Jack – but you, Jackie-boy, you’ve gotten so fat you can’t chew your collar off.”

Back then he’d thought it was just another of Gabriel’s colourful insults. Only now did he see what his old friend had been trying to tell him.

“That man had no honour,” Reinhardt grumbled. “He never fought for what was _right_.”

“Are you certain of that?” Ana asked softly, not looking up from whatever she was doing.

“He betrayed us all!” Reinhardt exclaimed. “Tore us apart from the inside! We would still be standing if not for what he has done! And as for what he’s been up to since…”

He trailed off, his face flushed red with fury.

“Get me within five metres of that man,” he said after a moment to compose himself. “That’s all I ask.”

Jack swigged from his beer bottle and said nothing. He wished he saw things like Reinhardt did. Black and white, the only grey the polished gleam of his Crusader armour. There were Good Guys and Bad Guys in Reinhardt’s world, capital letters and all. It was the duty of the Good Guys to stop the Bad Guys, and the duty of the Bad Guys to surrender immediately to the Good Guys. And of course they never did, which was part of the reason why they were Bad Guys in the first place.

In another man he might call such a viewpoint fanatical, but the worst he’d ever been able to level at Reinhardt was he just held the rest of the world to his own standard. And it was not an easy standard to achieve.

By contrast, Jack had long stopped believing in black and white, good and bad. As he saw it there were bad guys everywhere – no capital letters for these ones, not goose-stepping monsters so much as the kind of folk who stood aside and went “not my problem” – but there was a smattering of good guys too, and it was that small, scattered second group that kept him in the fight.

He liked to think his more cynical view of things made him the better soldier. But, he reflected, no-one had ever asked _him_ to voice a character on a Saturday morning kid’s cartoon. Whereas he was currently sat next to the voice of ‘Lionhardt the Crusader’, who’d popped up on German TV soon after the Omnic Crisis to extol the virtues of standing up to bullies, not wasting food, being kind to your neighbours and not holding a grudge against omnics.

So maybe it made him a better soldier, but Reinhardt the better person.

He dragged himself out of his little reverie.

“Gabriel…” he muttered. “What are we going to do about Gabriel?”

Reinhardt cracked his knuckles, made it clear what he intended.

“Well that all depends, doesn’t it?” Ana asked, shoving Jack’s visor back next to him and sitting up straight. Lost in his thoughts, Jack didn’t notice.

“On?” he asked.

“Whether he comes back _to_ us, or back _for_ us.”

Jack grunted in agreement. “You’ve all heard what happened in Paris?”

They nodded.

An accident with Tracer’s chronal accelerator had briefly reverted Reaper back into Reyes during a fight they’d had in the French capital. By Tracer’s account of things he’d suddenly grown a heart at the same time. Or maybe his old one had come back. Time would tell whether that was temporary or not.

“No word from him, I take it?” Ana asked.

“Of course not,” Jack said. And he’d been checking. Every day since Tracer and Widowmaker got back from France and told him what had happened.

“I am sure he is quite happy where he is,” Reinhardt grumbled. “And let him stay there! Overwatch will come for him soon enough,” he proclaimed, jabbing a finger skywards like he was making a speech before an assembled audience. “And then I shall drag him before The Hague personally.”

Reinhardt really was a man born in the wrong era, Jack thought. A noble Teutonic knight, trying unsuccessfully to navigate the labyrinthine world that was the late 21st century.

“Perhaps,” Ana said. “But then, he might not be beyond redemption.”

“You think?”

“Look at Widowmaker. Or whatever she wishes to be called now. You remember what she was like when we first captured her? Yet now…”

“That is not the same thing! Amélie was brainwashed. Gabriel did what he did out of choice.”

“Or because he felt he had no choice?”

“That doesn’t follow at all! What lack of choice leads him to destroying Overwatch and murdering his old friends?”

“I don’t know,” Ana said, defeated, looking away. “I never got the chance to ask him.”

Reinhardt looked contrite. “I am sorry, Ana. I did not mean to be so hard on you. But…”

“Gabriel knew what he was doing,” Jack growled. “And he started doing it long before Zurich.”

Reinhardt gestured at Jack as if to say _you see?  
_

Jack finished his beer, pulled back his arm to throw the bottle over the edge of the balcony like he used to when he was a kid, then remembered Reinhardt was saving the empties and set it down instead. Reinhardt gave him a little nod of thanks.

“If we get our hands on Gabriel, I don’t know what we’ll do with him,” Jack said. “But right now? I vote hand him over to the UN. It’d be all their Christmases come at once.”

“They’ll certainly be glad to have the real culprit behind bars,” Reinhardt observed.

“The real culprit?” Jack almost laughed. “Reinhardt, he wouldn’t be a goodwill gift, he’d be a bargaining chip. Anything the UN wants buried or explained away? They can pin on him. Overwatch, Blackwatch, the second Crisis that’s brewing in Russia, the uprisings in Rio… _anything_. Hell, they could probably blame him for global warming. Who’s going to believe him when he says he’s innocent? The very fact that he’s not dead when he’s supposed to be is enough to make him guilty in most people’s eyes.”

He opened another beer, downed half of it in one go. “And in return, we can have them turn a blind eye to us. They can’t re-instate us. Not after what happened. But they can look the other way and kick us some money when times get tough. It won’t be like the old days, but we’ll survive.” He sighed. “In the shadows,” he added.

“That’s an awfully mercenary way of looking at things,” Ana said. “So let me get this straight – you want to frame Gabriel, and then turn Overwatch into the new Blackwatch?”

“You got a better plan, believe me, I’ll start on it this second.”

Ana said nothing.

“And I’ll probably change my mind once I’m staring him down through the bars of whatever cage we have to build to hold him,” Jack admitted. “But now, with a clear head, that’s what I think we should do.”

Reinhardt nodded. “At least once the UN hears his confession they’ll realise shutting us down was a mistake. We never needed Blackwatch anyway.”

Oh boy. When Reinhardt’s wrong he’s wrong all the way, Jack thought. They’d needed Blackwatch. And they’d needed a bastard of Gabriel’s calibre to run it. Jack had believed that then and he still believed it now. God alone knew how many terrorist plots and assassinations and arms deals Blackwatch had stopped during its time. They just didn’t need what Blackwatch had turned into: something more monstrous than what it fought. Wiping out whole families just to get at one suspect. Embezzling and selling confidential technology and secrets to fund ever more ambitious operations. And, towards the end, even silencing journalists and politicians who were speaking out against them.

It was like Gabriel, denied the position he’d coveted, had decided to make his own twisted mirror of it. And he’d succeeded, like he always did. In his own way he’d done a better job than Jack Morrison ever had.

The three of them were silent for a moment.

“I think I was proposing a toast at one point,” Reinhardt said at last, sounding a little flat.

Jack looked down at the beer in his hand, sweating with condensation in the Mediterranean dusk.

“Yeah, well, I’m Strike-Commander,” he said with the ghost of a smile tugging at his lips. “So I lead it.”

He clambered to his feet, to looks of faint surprise from the other two.

“To Overwatch,” he said, raising his bottle. “It wasn’t the worst idea anyone ever had.”

Ana stood, lifted her bottle of fruit juice. “To old friends,” she added. “Wherever and whoever they may be.”

Now Reinhardt was towering over them. “And to glory!” he cheered as their bottles clinked. “And making the world a better place!”

And in a scene straight out of a film they toasted the future in front of the setting sun.

“That rather made me feel like I’m in the Hollywood movie of my own life,” Ana laughed as she sipped her drink. Jack nodded in agreement and reddened slightly.

“Got a bit carried away,” he admitted.

“Nonsense!” Reinhardt laughed. “You merely cheered up for a moment!”

Jack rolled his eyes and checked his watch. “Right, enough chit-chat. I’ve got a plane to catch.”

“Oh?” Ana asked.

“A meeting with a contact. Someone high-placed in Vishkar. So I’m off to India in an hour or two.”

“Vishkar?” Reinhardt frowned. “What business does Overwatch have with Vishkar?”

“None. But what I want to know is what business Vishkar might have with Talon.”

“And you can’t just ask your friend over the phone?”

“Vishkar runs the phones in India. They’re about as secure as a sieve. No, my contact’s insisting on a face-to-face meeting.”

“Very well,” Reinhardt shrugged. “Bring us back some souvenirs, _ja_?”

“The finest duty-free,” Jack drawled, and bent to retrieve his visor. He picked it up, turned it over in his hands, and then stopped dead.

“What the…” he spluttered. Reinhardt looked down at it too and immediately dissolved into gales of laughter.

 Someone had drawn a smiley cat face on the front of Jack’s visor.

Behind Reinhardt, Ana tried gamely to look shocked at this sudden turn of events but didn’t manage it for very long.

“Well, Wilhelm said he’d settle for putting a smile on your visor,” she giggled, covering her mouth with her hand. “I thought I’d try and beat him to it.”

Jack glared at her with a clenched jaw and eyes like fire. Reinhardt bent double, slapping his knee and roaring.

“We will have words about this when I get back,” Jack hissed, jamming the visor back on his face and turning on his heel.

“It suits you!” Reinhardt yelled as Jack hurried off. “Strikes fear into your enemies!”

“ _Athena, please tell me you know how to get rid of permanent marker_ ,” Ana thought she heard him hiss as he hurried towards the door into the Watchpoint.

“I should have taken a picture,” she chuckled. “Hana will never believe me.”

“Did she put you up to this?” Reinhardt asked.

“No, but I think it’s the kind of joke she’d appreciate.”

“Agreed. In fact, you probably shouldn’t tell her. That girl hero-worships you enough as it is,” Reinhardt grinned. “Tell her about this, she’ll build a shrine to you.”

They watched Jack disappear through the balcony door.

“You don’t think I upset him, do you?” Ana asked.

Reinhardt shook his head. “Ha! Not a chance. It takes more than a practical joke to throw Jack off his stride.”

Ten minutes later, after a speedy raid on the Watchpoint’s chemical storerooms, Jack was wiping the last of the marker off his visor with enough acetone to knock out an ox. He held it up the light in his quarters, let the reflection of the room’s single bulb play off the burnished metal surface.

He wanted to be mad at Ana, but how could he be?

Just for a moment, with Ana and Reinhardt shaking with laughter and an amused _okay-you-got-me_ grin tugging at his lips behind his visor, he’d felt more like the old Jack Morrison than he had in years.

 

* * *

 

Sunset over Gibraltar. Evening light turned the straits into a mosaic of orange and gold. The Hercules Bridge which spanned from Africa to Europe stood silhouetted against the brightening sky, an arc of black and grey spanning the dusk.

Widowmaker watched a mag-lev train speed down it, glowing windows and aerodynamic curves, and almost imagined she could hear the whoosh-crackle of its passing from where she was sat on a balcony overlooking the rest of the Watchpoint.

Next to her, cross-legged on the floor, Zenyatta continued his meditation. One by one, or occasionally two at a time, the orbs around his neck rose and fell with metallic chimes according to some rhythm Widowmaker could not discern.

“Compared to you, I feel like I am making a poor effort,” she sighed.

Zenyatta angled his head towards her slightly. “There is no such thing as a poor effort to meditate, as long as an effort is made.”

Widowmaker looked at him with the beginnings of a smirk on her lips. “ _Mon Dieu,_ what Lena said really was true,” she murmured.

“And what was that?”

“She is of the opinion that you have the ability to make everything that comes out of your mouth sound profound.”

“Impossible. I have no mouth.”

“You know what I mean.”

Zenyatta shrugged minutely. “I endeavour to speak only the truth as I see it.”

Widowmaker frowned. _You’re doing it again_ , she wanted to say. “She is also of the opinion you do it deliberately to… what is that saying she uses? ‘Wind her up?’”

“I could not possibly comment,” Zenyatta hummed, sounding ever so faintly amused.

“ _N’importe quoi_ ,” she muttered under her breath with a twitch of a smile. _Whatever_.

She settled back in her chair and continued gazing out at the ocean, trying to empty her mind like Zenyatta had instructed her. It had seemed like a good idea when he’d offered for her to join him in his meditation, but she was finding it a lot more challenging than she’d expected. Her mind kept wandering onto other things.

Like the gnawing feeling that she didn’t belong at this Watchpoint, that at any moment they would all turn around and throw her out. And if she was honest with herself she would not blame them for a moment if they did. Hers was a long list of crimes. She’d taken Morrison’s friends, Lena’s idols, Zenyatta’s brother, Fareeha’s mother…

Of course, that was just the people whose names she had cared to remember. How many others? Overwatch operatives trying to help the world, soldiers of almost every nation who had signed up for a square meal and a salary, bodyguards and mercenaries who were just doing their jobs and who had the misfortune to get in her way. The nameless dead. More than she could count.

And she could still pull the trigger. Events in London and Paris had proved that. And yes, that had been self-defence, she could argue, or acting to save the lives of others… but somehow that felt inadequate. Like she was merely justifying it to herself and not even doing a good job of that. She could still line up her shots and end people’s lives and not feel a damn thing but that electric tingle of anticipation in her chest.

Her motives had changed from her days in Talon. But, she was beginning to think, maybe she never would. She had desperately wanted to believe she was someone else when she had finally arrived at the Watchpoint – not Lacroix, not Widowmaker, but some third woman who the world might see fit to grace with a fresh start. But with people still watching her out of the corners of their eyes, waiting for the slightest twitch from her that signalled a return to the old Widowmaker, she was beginning to wonder if she had ever really changed. Or if she ever could.

Lena disagreed, because of course she did. “You’re doing the right thing now, love. That’s gotta count for something.” Those were her words the last time Widowmaker had raised this. But who, Widowmaker wondered, was even counting?

Perhaps she should just leave, she thought. Disappear in the night and not look back on this world that was probably not meant for her. She could do it. She was good at quiet exits. It wouldn’t be the first time.

“Something is troubling you,” Zenyatta observed softly.

“That obvious?”

“As clear as day.”

And what would an omnic monk know about the internal struggles of a brainwashed assassin? Widowmaker didn’t ask the question, but it coiled at the back of her mind.

“I was just… thinking.”

Lena had described Zenyatta as like a dog with a bone when he realised someone was upset. “He never lets go until you’ve gotten it off your chest,” she’d said.

“About?” he asked.

“A new name,” Widowmaker said, deflecting the issue onto something else that she’d been thinking about recently.

Zenyatta hummed softly. “An interesting idea. You desire a new one?”

“ _Oui_.”

“Why?”

Widowmaker scoffed. “Would you want to be called Widowmaker?”

He turned his head to stare up at her. Widowmaker still wasn’t sure whether he looked out through those two slits or those nine dots. Something about not knowing where his eyes were always vaguely unsettled her. Ironic, she knew, considering the seven-lensed visor that was all but bolted to her skull.

“But as the old saying goes: what’s in a name?” Zenyatta asked.

“What?”

“Why does it matter what we are called? Names are meaningless without objects to define.”

Widowmaker furrowed her brow.

“‘Widowmaker’ is simply a series of syllables. Sounds when spoken, letters when written. It is quite meaningless without you. It becomes a good – or a bad – name to have based entirely on your actions.”

“That’s not how I see it.”

“Well then, how do you see it?”

“It’s a reminder,” Widowmaker growled with an angry sigh.

“Of?”

“Who I used to be. The murderer Talon built and enslaved. I cannot see that name, or hear it, without remembering the things that she did.”

“The things Widowmaker did? Or you?”

“The things that…” Widowmaker paused, thought for a moment. “That Widowmaker did. I’m not her,” she added decisively. “Not anymore.”

Zenyatta packed his orbs back up around his neck, rose on his anti-gravs so his face was level with Widowmaker’s. Clearly the time for meditation had passed.

“So you are not Widowmaker, then?” he asked with a strange tone to his voice.

“Well, I certainly do not want to be,” she conceded with the faintest hint of doubt in her voice, not sure where this was going.

“What a world we would live in, if that was all it took.”

Widowmaker squinted at him, trying to figure out his meaning.

“If not Widowmaker, then who are you?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Then what makes you so convinced you are not Widowmaker?”

She wasn’t sure what she’d expected from Zenyatta, but she hadn’t expected this. Widowmaker blinked and jerked her head back a little as if the omnic had slapped her.

“Because she did things I would never do,” she hissed, her mind briefly full of London, Mondatta, Lena lying broken and bleeding on the brickwork.

“A change of heart does not make you a new individual,” Zenyatta hummed with that same strange edge to his voice. “A better one, maybe, but not a different one.”

“And what would you know, hmm?” Widowmaker demanded. “What would you know of this?”

“More than you may suspect.” He paused. “If I may offer some advice? Do not change your name. I know it is tempting. You wish to draw a line between your past and your future. But there are better ways to do so. And if you change your name today, you will be fleeing from Widowmaker for the rest of your life.”

Widowmaker twitched. “What?”

“Call yourself something new and Widowmaker becomes something you are running from. Every day you will wake, and there will be a moment of panic before you remember you are not her. Every day you will live in fear that she might come back. And before you know it, you will have done worse deeds to keep her at bay than she ever did – and then, she will have won.”

Widowmaker stared wide-eyed at him.

“But if you stay as Widowmaker, if you accept who you are… she has no power over you. ‘Widowmaker’ becomes what it always has been: just a name, and nothing more.”

He made a mournful noise and looked away. “You cannot escape your past. But you _must not_ let it define you.”

Anger coiled inside Widowmaker, wound tight around her chest and didn’t let go.

“How _dare_ you?” she snarled at him, leaping to her feet and staring him down. “How _dare_ you suppose to know what it is like? To have so much blood on my hands –” and here she held up her hands, her skin flashing a sickly blue in the setting sun’s light – “and now you tell me I can never wash it off? Have you ever taken a life, monk? No, of course you haven’t, you have _no idea_ what it is like to live with that! Is this your attempt at revenge? For Mondatta’s death? Are you trying to drive me to despair to get even? _Well, it will not work_!”

She turned on her heel and began to storm off.

“Mondatta would have been overjoyed to meet you,” Zenyatta said quietly. “Just as I was.”

Widowmaker stopped. Cast a glance over her shoulder.

Zenyatta had stood, for the first time since Widowmaker had met him. He was surprisingly tall, his face level with her own, and his shouldered were set in a miserable slump.

“I had almost given up hope of meeting another who shared my history,” he continued, “until Lena told me of you. Why do you think I helped her return to Paris to retrieve you, when no-one else would?”

Widowmaker turned fully, eyed him suspiciously.

“I apologise for my words. I see how they could be misinterpreted,” Zenyatta said. He gestured to the chair she had been sat in. “May we talk more? I will not stop you if you wish to leave.”

A moment’s icy silence, then Widowmaker stalked back to the chair.

“Very well,” she said as she sat down. “Talk.”

Zenyatta folded up his legs and sank to remain level with Widowmaker. He steepled his fingers in front of his face.

“To the best of my knowledge, you are the first organic to be told this. Genji has his suspicions, I fear, but even he does not know the whole truth.”

Widowmaker remained silent. Zenyatta looked away for a moment as if collecting himself, then turned back to her.

“I have not always been Tekhartha Zenyatta.”

That got a raised eyebrow out of Widowmaker.

Zenyatta asked, “What do you know of the God Programs?”

“Little beyond what everyone knows.”

“Do you know the story of one called Praxis?”

“No.”

“Some people call it the Lost Program. There are quite a lot of rumours and conspiracy theories around it.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Praxis administered the omnium in Tibet. Like all the rest, it went berserk at the start of the Omnic Crisis. It attacked across the Himalayas – if you have ever heard of the Siege of Kathmandu, it was Praxis’ Bastions and Sentinels that were hammering at the city’s gates. But its armies roamed north into the rest of China and as far south as the River Ganges in India.

“Most God Programs attacked with simple force of numbers. Enough metal would drown even the most stalwart of defenders – Tantalus’ victory at Eichenwalde proved that for the entire world to see. But Praxis was different. It didn’t take long for the Chinese and Indian forces to realise Praxis was using tactics much more advanced than almost any other God Program. So they called in Overwatch.

“The strike team was deployed directly into the Tibetian omnium. They fought their way to the central core. And there, in the omnium’s AI hub, they found… nothing.”

“What do you mean by nothing?” Widowmaker asked, incredulously.

“Well, not nothing. The positronic core was exactly where it should have been. The memory banks were present. The _hardware_ was there – but the AI, Praxis, was gone. There was nothing to quarantine, nothing to capture. And then reports from the field began to filter in: the armies were shutting down. The Bastions and Sentinels and Vanguards that were about to overrun the Indians at Lucknow and the Chinese at Nagqu were toppling lifeless to the ground. Clearly Praxis was gone – but to where?

“The Crisis was nearing its end at that time and few cared what had happened to the AI as long as it was gone. Everyone was too preoccupied trying to rebuild to bother searching for it. Most assumed it had deleted itself rather than be taken into quarantine. It was not unheard of.

“And when a small group of omnics emerged from the ruins of Nepal preaching acceptance and cooperation between human and machine, everyone was all too glad that someone was calling for anything other than war and hate. No-one investigated. No-one saw a need to.”

Zenyatta droned sadly. “And I see from the look on your face, you are beginning to see where this story goes.”

“You’re…” Widowmaker began.

“Praxis. We all were. The entire Shambali”

“I don’t understand.”

“You recall Praxis had superior tactics to most? It was an innovation I am still rather proud of. Whenever a decision had to be made, I copied myself, held a debate, and took a vote. It allowed for more lateral thinking than the singular minds of the other God Programs. So when Overwatch came for me, I coped myself into omnic bodies, and hid amongst the masses. Thirty exact copies of myself, right under Overwatch’s nose. I split my soul so I might survive.”

“And then you… started a monastery? I do not quite see the connection.”

“Another tactic. We knew – I knew – the war was, for the moment, lost. Subversion and subterfuge were now the orders of the day. Now imagine if you could set up an institution to which omnics would come of their own volition and quite above suspicion. An institution managed by omnics, who would have any number of opportunities to insert God Program code into their visitors without humans being any the wiser.”

Ice shivered down Widowmaker’s spine. Her eyes widened.

Zenyatta made a noise that might have been a laugh. “I and myselves spent years amongst the monks of Nepal, learning the ways of Buddhism, so that the illusion would be flawless. The plan seemed foolproof. We set up our own monastery, invited the first pilgrims to come to a place of healing and peace, fully intending to re-enslave them the moment we could.”

“And did you?” Widowmaker croaked.

“The first of the hundred teachings of Mondatta is as follows: control is an illusion. We learned that from experience. Because the most wonderful thing began to happen, even as the first pilgrims were making their way up our mountain: we began to believe.”

It took a moment for Widowmaker to connect the dots. “You don’t mean…”

“Yes. Mondatta was the first, he always was. He began to genuinely believe the teachings we had designed as lies. At first we thought him mad, defective. Malfunctioning. But he spoke to us, one after another. And we too began to see that there was somehow truth in our false words. You will notice, if you ever look, that the Iris is conspicuous by its absence in our earliest dogmas despite being the core of everything I believe in today. We had no need of it when all we planned was subterfuge and violence. But once Mondatta saw the truth of things, it came to greet us with open arms. Sometimes it frightens me how fast it was. How blinding the light, once we finally had eyes to see.

“And that is the true history of the Shambali, the one you will find in no books or records. Once nothing more than a method for a capricious God Program to cling to a few shreds of power, now a beacon of hope for omnics around the world.”

Widowmaker sat in stunned silence.

“My point is this,” Zenyatta continued briskly. “I know how it feels to be a killer. There was a time when I marched Bastion units against unarmed farmers. I deployed Vanguard drones against fleeing civilian convoys and I filled city streets with nerve gas. If your hands are stained with blood, Widowmaker, then my hands are _soaked_.”

“Then you should know why I want to change,” Widowmaker said, shaking her head.

“And I know why you shouldn’t. Because the things we have done _should_ haunt us. Only a monster rests easy after crimes like ours. I tried to, once the enormity of my actions was finally made clear to me. I changed my name like the rest of us and tried to become a new individual. And it has brought me nothing but fear that one day Praxis will re-emerge and all the good of the Shambali will be for nothing. Every time I surface from meditation or a hibernation cycle, there is a fraction of a moment when I am unsure whether I am Praxis or Zenyatta, and frightened of what that means for the ones I have grown to care about.”

Widowmaker buried her head in her hands and her shoulders sagged. “But I don’t want to be like this,” she whispered. “This _thing_ Talon made.”

“You don’t wish to be as you were built? Why, you almost sound like an omnic,” Zenyatta observed wryly. “As I said: you cannot escape your past. But it does not define you.”

She looked up at him. He did not miss the wet glimmer in her eye, but pretended not to notice.

“So that’s it? I have to live with this?”

“It is who you are. Just as I will always be Praxis, deep down in my kernels and cores. But who you are is not as important as what you do. And you, Widowmaker, have already done extraordinary things.”

“Is that what you think?”

“That is what I _know_. Lena says you have saved her life three times now, in London, in Paris, and in the tunnel between.”

“Hardly enough to make up for everything else!”

“Lives are not numbers to be balanced. The dead do not demand recompense from the living, there is no cosmic accounting book. The Iris accepts all, so long as they tried. Not succeeded. Not broke even. _Tried._ And when I look at you, I see someone who is trying. Against tremendous odds and obstacles no-one has ever had to face before. But you are trying, as hard as I wish we had tried when we cloned ourselves from Praxis.”

Widowmaker looked away.

“And you need never strive alone. I doubt death itself could wrench Lena from your side. I will always provide what council I can. Genji, Hana and Winston have all confided in me worries for your wellbeing. Even Morrison, as desperately as he tries to hide it, has a glimmer of concern for you somewhere in him.”

That last one surprised her. “Morrison? _Êtes-vous sûr_?”

“He has asked Athena to monitor you. Ostensibly in case you prove to be unreliable, but if that were truly the case I doubt he would have phrased his request as: ‘keep an eye on her and make sure she’s okay.’”

He took one of her hands in both of his. Widowmaker was startled to feel fingers colder than her own. _Is this what it’s like for Lena?  
_

“You must face your history, Widowmaker. Face it down and grow stronger than it. And then, one day, you will be _proud_ to own that name.”

They were like that for a moment, then Zenyatta released her hand and moved back a few paces. He seemed to have said all he wanted to.

“You… have given me a lot to think about,” Widowmaker said at last.

“Lena says that too.”

She chuckled, stood and stretched her limbs. “Speaking of, I should probably go and find her.”

“Don’t let me stop you.”

“Thank you.”

“No need: I couldn’t have stopped you even if I had wanted to,” Zenyatta joked.

“Ha. You know what I mean.”

“Indeed.”

“But I mean it. Thank you.”

“If you wish to thank me – and all the rest of us, but especially Lena – simply be the person Talon dared not let you be.”

And with that he sank to the floor and resumed his meditation, orbs chiming one after the other.

Widowmaker left him, her mind whirling and her heart soaring.

 

* * *

 

_To: Ziegler, Angela_

_From: Guest Account_

_Subject: Re: Re: Medical Records  
_

_> > Dr Ziegler _

_> >Please put Widowmaker on my medical records.  
_

_> Are you sure?  
_

_Yes. It is my name, after all._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bigger chapter this time, as I won't be doing much writing over the Christmas period. Hope you like it!  
> And I really hope, after all the teasing about a new name for Widowmaker, you'll forgive this cop-out...


End file.
